If you begin by questioning one or more of your current advisors, don’t be too surprised when they reply, “What do you mean? Everything is just fine.”

While this answer might stop you cold, it is indicative of one of the two critical reasons capital becomes trapped in a private enterprise. Quite bluntly, this answer means your advisors do not know how to transfer capital out of your business without causing a significant amount of financial carnage… for you the business owner!

They want you to think everything is fine because they have nothing to offer you if it isn’t!

But, let’s lay off the advisors for a second and start a little closer to home. What if you were to ask yourself, “What happens now?”

Capital transfer requires leadership

Business owners have been conditioned to allow their advisors to tell them what can and cannot happen. “Trust the experts… they know best,” is the mantra chanted throughout our nation’s boardrooms.

But consider this: each expert is a specialist in a chosen discipline and none specialize in the discipline of business ownership. None is qualified to lead your business. That’s your job. Why then do you let advisors with no understanding of what it means to own a business tell you what to do? Why indeed?

Capital transfer requires capital engineering

Lawyers, financial planners, accountants, bankers, and management consultants are specialists operating within the boundaries of their discipline and expertise. On the other hand, successful capital transfer requires a coordinated effort between all advisors; it is impossible for any single specialist to accomplish in isolation.

A capital engineer possesses an intimate understanding of how each traditional discipline works. They are highly accomplished interdisciplinarians. (This is a word I made up… but it works, so I am sticking with it.) And, because each specialist has something to contribute, successful capital transfer can only be accomplished when the effort from each is coordinated.

It is critical for you to understand your role in all of this: a capital engineer must rely on a business owner’s leadership to bring the specialists into line.

In short, successful capital transfer can only be accomplished when your advisors take direction from you and are managed by someone who possesses a high degree of interdisciplinary wisdom.

An answer to, “What happens now?”

To overcome your own inertia (if it exists) and your advisory team’s defensive resistance to “outside” interference, you must have access to information that is relevant, makes sense and is irrefutable.
This type of information is made available during our discovery process. In addition to clarifying your current situation, exposing root causes of the issues and helping you articulate a clear, powerful and positive set of goals and outcomes for you and your business, our discovery process also gives you access to a proprietary diagnostic tool called The RV Score®.

This is not a commercial for our work… well not entirely. My main purpose in mentioning The RV Score® is to give you a clearer picture of the kind information you are not getting and the debilitating effect its absence has on your ability to lead your advisory team, successfully transfer capital, and realize your value.

By combining a number of quantitative and qualitative inputs, The RV Score® isolates expectation from reality in a marketplace that has so few benchmarks. Imagine what it would be like to have an accurate assessment of the current, future and potential liquidity of your business. Imagine if you were able to identify exactly what had to happen in order for you to access the means and tap into the qualities needed to realize the investment value in your business.

The next time you are handed a financial statement, take a fresh look at what it is actually telling you. Are you getting the information you need?